Shading and How to Use Colors in Enamels
Hi Patsy
Just enjoyed viewing all of your designs! Do you have any suggestions on shading within the cells of your cloisonne or know of any publications I could read to help me out?
thank you,
Wendy Edwards
Hi Wendy,
Thanks for visiting and I am happy to try to help. I can not recommend one book for this but I can say for me it took time. I was a Fine Arts Major in school and only used pin and ink. My love was drawing. When I first saw cloisonne I was hooked forever and begin a quest to learn colors.
I began photographing everything that was of interest to me. When diving, hiking, walking, always carrying a camera. With these photo I made albums to use as resources. I would take a month or so at a time and draw and paint till I got the impact I needed in my art.
Then it takes time to look and see the colors.One trick I have learned is to take a peice of paper and cut a hole in it. Place this over a picture and you can see better it is a pink white or a red green. There is more than one or two whites in a white flower petal. It makes the jewel much more interesting to use more than a couple of colors in the same family when shading.
The Huma Huma on the front of the site has 29 colors from blue to green.
My color plate of pinks has at least 14 colors on it. Now I know this is way too much for many artist but if I lay in half of these colors next to each other I can create a beautiful image from light pink to dark pink by placing these next to each other.
If you shade in this manner = laying colors of enamel next to each other in the same or similar color family, each time you lay in a layer of enamel you need to shift to the left or right to avoid a line from being created. I like to work from dark to light. This way after a couple of layers of enamel are laid in and fired I drop out the darkest color of enamel, say it was on the right of my design, then shift all my colors of enamel to the right,I can get a very even and beautiful gradation of color!
A book of watercolors I used is “Light Up Your Watercolors” by Linda Stevens Moyer. She has a couple of exercises you can try, and she uses her warm colors to bring the information forward. Also try “Colored Pencil Fast Techniques” by Bet Borgenson. She teaches Juxtaposing Color which is great for color impact. You can use her exercises in watercolors as well.
Happy Enameling! Patsy
Light Up Your Watercolors by Linda Stevens Moyer
Great book on watercolors. She uses the white of the paper to stay bright as we would use our fine silver. Adding warm colors and light to make the information come forward, adding shadows and cool colors to create distance.
Try the exercise she has, it helps you understand more about layering colors to achieve bright colors. Afterwards practice layering in enamels by making test plates and see the results. Enamels have to layer in a different order.
Water colors can layer yellows first then reds and pinks followed by the darker colors, like blues and greens. In enameling our warm color burn out so we need to leave them toward the end. So you just have to apply this in reverse. I start with the darkest colors first. Then medium and light colors. As I layer and fire I leave out the darkest color and continue with the medium and light colors. And finally have my lightest color last.
So enamelist add fluxes to the last layers to fill the cell. I have had this get cloudy on me so I continue with color in the same family but very light. The warm colors you can start adding about half way through the project using flux for several layers first then jumping into the yellows, oranges and reds.
Great Book!
Watercolors and Getting Started
Watercolors are a great way to get into your designs together and see on paper first, if what you have imaged will be delivered in your final enameling design.
Get yourself a set of Winsor Newton Travel Watercolors, A block of watercolor paper that is Hot Pressed and a #3 Sable brush.
The travel kit of colors have 10 – 12 colors, all you need to start designing your enameled project. A block of watercolor paper is just that. The stack of paper’s edges are glued together, because when it gets wet in normal conditions of painting with water the paper would warp , and it prevents that. As hot press is more likely to warp than cold pressed, but it is a smoother paper than cold pressed. Great for small painting of detail. And I find a #3 sable brush is a good size to get the job done.
I begin my enameling classes and my own jewels with design time in
watercolors. The paint can be used in layering very similar enameling, where I apply a layer of enamels and fire before applying another color, watercolors can be apply in one layer of color and let it dry before applying another.
One book that was useful to me is “Light up your Watercolors” by Linda Stevens Moyers. In her book she starts color with the medium color = value, then going to her warm colors = interest points, and then the cool colors this being her darks. We have to layer in a different order as our warm color would burn out if laid in too soon. So I apply them in the order of cool colors first -I start with my dark color, then medium color = value colors and last the warm color to produce the impact.
Happy Enameling!
Building a Good Foundation Cloisonne Jewelry Techniques Enamels, Properties, Firing Times and Color Charts
by Patsy Croft
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Building a Good Foundation by Making Test Plates
It takes time to do test plates but to redo and redo takes more time in the long run. Do test plates. Try to understand hard firing and medium firing enamels and where to use them. All the enamels we buy from Thompson and Ninoniya or Bovano for enameling in jewelry or wall plaques or vessels are sold as medium firing enamels. But in the category there are enamels that are harder or longer firing than others. If you do test plate of small dots and fire the plate once at 1425 degrees you will see what I mean. Some of the dots are bumpy and some are very smooth. Once you see which of your enamels fire faster than the others you simply know which ones should be on the bottom and which ones are best on the top layers of your process. Hard should be on the bottom and soft on top. Also hard and soft fired next to each other can result in cracking!
HERE IS A TEST PLATE
If I have a project of cloisonne and it will be a deep layering of colors I need an enamel base flux that will hold up for many firings. This is when you need the harder firing flux. Bovano 3# is a hardest firing flux I have found. This will protect my warm colors from mingling with the base metal.
Building a Good Foundation Cloisonne Jewelry Techniques
by Patsy Croft
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Cloisonne and Distorsion
In designing you cloisonne fine jewelry here is something to keep in mind. I want to show you what happens in cloisonne as wires attract heat and cause the base meal to distort.
This is a cloisonne piece I am currently working on and thought it 
would be a good opportunity to show how things can move.
There is a concentration of wires in the top left of my design. As I am layering in enamels the cloisonne jewel starts to bow up in this area.
Here you can see the top left of the enamel piece is higher, and the right base of the enamel piece is bowing. And can cause several problems if not dealt with. One, as you have planned your warm colors in the high area you could sand it all off while trying to make a nice even dome, because you have several layers of flux before you have added the warm colors. Second in setting the right side will be higher and maybe your bezel will not cover the same as on the left side.
And the farther you go without knowing and planning more can go wrong. The counter enamel also likes the heat and will pool under this area, and can eventually cause the enamel jewel to sink in the area as well.
As the points of my piece are lifting and the center starts going down I know I have reached the limits of layering in the enamels.
One way to counter this is by adding cloison wire to the back of the jewel opposite of the wire work on the front of the jewel.
Happy Enameling!
Building a Good Foundation Enamels, Properties, Firing Times and Color Charts
by Patsy Croft
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Keeping Things Clean
I read everything I can find on enameling. And last year I found a book written in the late 1800′s. There was a chapter on keeping the studio and kiln clean. I was happy to see this as I have heard many many times how anal enamelist are.
One thing most enamelist do not like is to get oxides in their fired enamel piece. It can cause cracking and bubbles. So the best way is to keep your kiln and trivets free of these oxides. The oxidation builds up on your trivets from use. So you need to wipe them off from time to time.
I use a blow dryer every few firings and blow out the kiln. Also the enamel can building up on your trivet, you can scrap it off and add some jeweler’s rouge to prevent this. This jewelers rouge is also what you want to put on the iron if you needed to flatten you work that is warping.
I use distilled water to wash my enamels. And I look prior to using the washed enamels for spots of deterioration. These look like small white spots. And when fired will remain white spots. If you see them and pull them out usually you are okay. But as you continue to work and notice the enamels are floating on the surface, you may have to take further action.
I had a lot of trouble a couple of years ago with enameling going bad. You can throw them away and reorder. You can re-wash them all along way while using the wet enamel. To remove the floaties. This mold like substance grows on wet enamels. So they may not show up in the beginning but hours later while sitting wet. You can rinse them with nitric and water. But not your reds. One problem that arises from this is it hardens the enamel. Meaning it is now a higher fire or longer fire enamel. Which can be used to advantage if you need it.
Happy Enamels!
Patsy
Building a Good Foundation Cloisonne Jewelry Techniques
by Patsy Croft
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Thick Metal Thin Enamel
A tip credited to Valeri Timofeev .
“thick metal = thin enamel, thin metal = thick enamel” This means if you are enameling say cloisonne, you can get pretty thick enamels on the metal plate of your choice, as long as you counter the same thickness. I have enameled to a mm in thickness on 20 ga metal= thin metal. But if you have 16 ga metal and want to enamel on it, you can do so with one layer of enamel and no counter.
Here is cloisonne enameling and the 
enamels are approximately 1mm in depth.
And here on the left is thick metals of 16 ga with one coat of flux and one color of red enamel.
That Rubber Stuff
Tuff Break is a rubber product I purchase from Fred Woell. You can find his contact in Resources. I use this for several reasons in all my settings of enamels jewelry. It adds protect the counter enamel while setting, by giving the enamel piece a cushion which help me not crack the piece during this process, and it take care of that tinny sound of the enamel against the metal once the piece is complete.
Many enamelist use glues or a piece of plastic behind the enameled piece and I feel this is a more professional element of the whole jewel.
Designing
Wendy,
I wanted to mention when you are designing look at these images. Think about the turtle and the pelican. If you squint your eyes and look at either in the photos you took it is easier to see the turtle as it is dark in the middle of the piece = the turtle and the water right around it is light. The pelican is harder to see as it is very close in color value. The pelican and the background.
Also something that helps make a design show up is to use complementary colors to help off set the desired image. As in this color sample.
Happy Enameling!
Patsy 
Purchase you Metals from One Reliable Source.
I have seen several students, all located in different area of the country with either the wrong metal or impure metal. When you are enameling for fine jewelry it is most common to select fine silver as your base metal. For several reasons, sparkle and clarity of the enamels, and second the enamel fuses to the fine silver. With hobby style resources available for purchasing metal and the introduction of new metals such as Argentium silver it is easy to get the wrong product. Before you begin working with any silver, it is not that easy to tell the difference. But once you have began your project, maybe four layers of enamels later you start seeing the bubbles and discoloration of impure metals. I highly recommend to buy all your metal from one reliable supplier, and only one. Then you know exactly were you purchased it and can hold them accountable if it is fine silver. But more than likely, if it is from a notable refinery they will not have a problem of recognizing metals.